How Kansas City Is | Grammy Awards
We’re asking the question: How “Kansas City” is… for all the good stuff going on in our world. Up today? The genre-mixing celebration of all things music, the 58th annual Grammy Awards. We’ll see a few Kansas Citians walk the red carpet at the Los Angeles Staples Center on Monday evening, and a few more hidden local gems throughout the show. Check out…
Citrus Fruit Grown in the Midwest… In Winter
The middle of winter is when the stream of locally grown fruits and vegetables in the Midwest begins to freeze up. Nicole Saville knows first-hand. Saville is the produce manager at Open Harvest, a grocery coop in Lincoln, Neb. The store promotes food grown by local farmers, but this time of year there just isn’t…
Commentary | ‘But The Questions Sure Do Linger.’
Editor’s Note: This commentary, from Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman, is part of a larger effort by KCPT and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) to explore the meaning of justice in the context of the 1988 explosion in south Kansas City that killed six Kansas City firefighters. The effort, called StoryWorks KC, includes a stage production about…
Back Into the ‘Underground’
During dress rehearsal Wednesday night, co-choreographer Tobin James of Storling Dance Theater’s “Underground” at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts struggled to speak. Sick, exhausted, her voice shot, she breathed deep as she watched the final rehearsal from a dark corner offstage. Twenty rows back in the sixteen hundred seat auditorium, co-choreographer Mona Enna…
KC is About to Get Bagel Crazy
The man opens the glass door to a suite in a Pleasant Valley industrial park. Before the couple seated at a wooden table by the front door can even respond, he’s apologizing and explaining that he just had to visit the space for himself. “I saw your ad on Craigslist,” said the man. “I don’t…
Back to the Drawing Board for Kansas City Public Schools
Kansas City Public Schools administrators entered Wednesday evening hoping they were only a couple weeks away from finalizing a master plan after more than two years of work. But after a three-hour school board meeting, dominated by discussions about the future of Wendell Phillips Elementary School and of the African-Centered College Preparatory Academy, it appeared…
The Weekend Starts Today
Ah, Valentine’s Day. For single people, it’s a festival of loneliness. For anyone in a relationship, it’s a Hallmark-hyped minefield of unreasonable expectations. The holiday is especially hard for men. The best any guy can do is put enough thought and money into the holiday to avoid getting in trouble. Then again, you may not…
Missouri Settles Tobacco Case
Missouri has settled a dispute over the terms of a multibillion settlement with the big tobacco companies that has cost it tens of millions of dollars over the last dozen or so years. Attorney General Chris Koster announced the settlement Monday, saying it will allow the state to recoup $50 million it lost in arbitration…
Take 5 For Your Health
Marketplace Enrollment Climbs In Kansas, Missouri The enrollment period for the federal health insurance marketplace closed last week, with higher enrollment than last year in Kansas and Missouri. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said 101,555 Kansans enrolled before the deadline. That’s about 5,000 more than the 96,197 Kansans who enrolled before last…
The end of a drought for KCMO ‘food desert’?
Residents living just south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, might get a grocery store after all. Truman Medical Centers disappointed people in and around the Beacon Hill and Longfellow neighborhoods when, in mid-2015, it nixed plans to build a supermarket on the northeast corner of 27th Street and Troost Avenue. The project had been in the…
Bloody, MO | Sharon ‘La Pistolera’ Kinne
Welcome to “Bloody, MO,” a Civil War-through-modern day video peek into Kansas City’s bloody past – starring equally notorious and unknown gunslingers, fire-starters, and godfathers. Today: Sharon “La Pistolera” Kinne Sharon Kinne was known to shoot her way out of a situation she didn’t want to be in, earning her the nickname “La Pistolera.” Connected to at least three…
How Kansas City is | Super Bowl 50
We’re asking the question: How “Kansas City” is… for all the good stuff going on in our world. Up today? The big game, of course. The Chiefs may not be taking the field in Santa Clara, but there are lots of local ties. Check out the video, and if you know of one that didn’t make the…
Could Genetically Engineered Animals be Coming to a Plate Near You?
Tucked away in a University of Missouri research building, a family of pigs is kept upright and mostly happy by a handful of researchers. Two new litters recently joined the assembly of pudgy, snorting, pink piglets. While they look like an ordinary collection of pigs one might find in hog barns all over the country,…
Commentary | The Super Bowl is Better From Home
For years, I went to The Big Game. Whether it was in Dallas, New Orleans or New York City, wherever the NFL decided to hold their annual orgy of self-promotion, I was there. Not this year. Just like roughly 114 million other Americans, this Super Sunday will find me enjoying the game the way it’s meant to…
KCK Mental Health Facility Recognized For ‘Excellence In Collaboration’
A Kansas City organization that serves area nonprofits has conferred its “excellence in collaboration” award on the Rainbow Mental Health Facility in Kansas City, Kansas, for its work with the KCK police department. Nonprofit Connect said Thursday that the Rainbow facility will be one of nine honorees at its 32nd annual Philanthropy Awards Luncheon, scheduled for…